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Submission + - Yoga site gets patent for pointing a 3-foot high camera at a person (yogainternational.com)

Submitted by Lirodon
Lirodon writes: The online yoga class site YogaGlo has been granted a patent for filming yoga classes by placing the camera at the back of a crowd with an aisle in the center (and the teacher at the end of said aisle). While the patent was rejected several times by the USPTO for prior art, somehow they accepted it after Yogaglo added the requirement that the camera have "a height of about three feet". A non-profit group thinks this patent is unenforcable, however, citing Yogaglo's own videos as prior art.

Submission + - The Double Life of Memory Exposed with Automata Processor (hpcwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As Nicole Hemsoth over at HPCwire reports "In a nutshell, the Automata processor is a programmable silicon device that lends itself to handing high speed search and analysis across massive, complex, unstructured data. As an alternate processing engine for targeted areas, it taps into the inner parallelism inherent to memory to provide a robust and absolutely remarkable, if early benchmarks are to be believed, option for certain types of processing."

Submission + - Are Prizes Bad For Hackathons? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: A growing number of hackathons are offering bigger and bigger prizes: Last week's LAUNCH Hackathon offered $1.6 million in cash and prizes. Next week, Salesforce will be hosting a hackathon at their Dreamforce conference, at which they'll be handing out a $1 million first-place prize. And GlobalHack recently announced plans to give away a $1 million first prize in a new series of annual hackathons. But, as ITworld's Phil Johnson discovered, some developers don't think this is such great idea, mainly because corporate hosted hackathons with prizes feel more like a job — or exploitation. What do you think, do big prizes make bad hackathons?

Submission + - Google Fiber partially reverses server ban

Submitted by Lirodon
Lirodon writes: After being called out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for banning the loosely-defined use of "servers" on its Fiber service, Google appears to have changed its tune, and now allows "personal, non-commercial use of servers that complies with this AUP is acceptable, including using virtual private networks (VPN) to access services in your home and using hardware or applications that include server capabilities for uses like multi-player gaming, video-conferencing, and home security"

Submission + - Quitting Smoking Easier for Social Media Users

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Smoking is a major public health problem, killing approximately 443,000 people every year in the United States. Quitting smoking can have a profound effect on a person's health, but it is also one of the hardest addictions to kick. A recent paper published in the Journal of Communication found that people who engage in health specific social networking sites found it easier to quit smoking.

Submission + - Microsoft Promotes 'Phablets' After Smartphone, Tablet Misfires (blogspot.com.au)

Submitted by quantr
quantr writes: Microsoft Corp. unveiled Windows Phone software for smartphone-tablet hybrids as well as more powerful chips as the company plays catchup to Google Inc. and Apple Inc. in mobile devices.
A bigger start menu with higher-resolution displays will enable the software to run on phones with five- and six-inch screens for the first time, Microsoft said today in a blog post. The update to Windows Phone 8 will roll out to developers tomorrow and customers in the coming months.
After losing out in smartphones and tablets to Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iOS software, Microsoft is trying to appeal to consumers in the middle. Global shipments of so-called phablets will more than double to 60.4 million this year, research firm IHS predicted in January. That’s a fraction of the more than 1 billion smartphones researcher IDC expects to be shipped.

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Submission + - Extending the Internet to the Bottom of the Ocean (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Wireless and cellular networks cover beaches and extend over the ocean to ships at sea but not, so far, under the ocean. A team of researchers at the University of Buffalo believe they’ve solved at least the technical problem of how to push wireless networking signals for long distances through the deep ocean to connect offshore oil and gas platforms, floating and underwater tsunami sensors and other remote facilities without having to bounce signals off a satellite first. Radio waves tend to be smothered or distorted by travel through water; most ocean-based sensors use acoustic waves instead, which link sensors into underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWASN). The team designed a low-power IPv4/IPv6-compatible networking protocol that uses very low power, compresses headers, is tolerant of fragmented data and connection delays, allows bi-directional communication with (and reconfiguration of) existing underwater sensors and is compatible with standard TCP/IP networks and IP router proxies. The approach is more than a simple translation from one networking medium to another. It leaves the higher-level TCP/IP networking protocols intact, but adds an adaptation layer between the data-link layer and network layer that compresses headers, changes packet size, transmission time-out settings and other requirements to be compatible with slower underwater transmissions. The team tested the implementation using a Linux-based driver, both PC and ARM-based computers and a Teledyne Benthos SM-75 Modem. They sealed two network nodes in 40-pound waterproof cases, dumped them into Lake Erie near Buffalo and transmitted instant-messaging signals from the application IPTUX from one to the other. They were also able to transfer files using FTP from an underwater client to server.

Comment Re:BBC's most effective copyright strategy in effe (Score 4, Informative) 216

Namely, destruction of all extant copies.

BBC destroyed the only copies of most of those episodes decades ago. The only existing copies are some that were sent overseas and temporarily lost, so they were not recovered and destroyed. Others only exist in the form of home-made speaker-to-microphone reel-to-reel audio tapes.

Actually, "wiping" was a rather common practice for every broadcaster back then. Tape was expensive, etc.

Submission + - Hands On With Windows 8.1 Preview

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Microsoft launched the preview version of Windows 8.1 at the company's Build conference in San Francisco and early signs show that Microsoft heard the criticisms, and has responded with impressive improvements. The new OS includes a number of changes starting with the return of the Start button and the ability to boot directly to the desktop. However Microsoft hasn't given up on making the new-style tile and full-screen more usable for all users. If anything, the tile-based Start screen has gotten more flexible, with new smaller and larger tile options. Windows 8.1 also drastically improves built-in search, SkyDrive cloud syncing, mail and Microsoft Music. Also with support for Miracast, users can now send video over Wi-Fi to large HDTVs. 8.1 also features Internet Explorer 11 which improves support for HTML 5 and picks up support for WebGL. Last but not the least, Windows 8.1 makes a strong business case. All versions of get BitLocker encryption, whereas Defender has been improved.

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